Did we exist before we were born??

[Noodles.]

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Did we exist before we were born??

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NO

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fyp

[yukoncpa]

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Yes, though perhaps not in the way you envision.

The universe, including all time, exists simply as a covariant state |PSI>. It's all there. Before, after, during, etc. You are a part of it. You don't become part of it when you're born, and then stop being a part of it when you die. It simply exists (though we don't know why), with you a part of it.

Analogy: Morpheus is part of the movie "The Matrix." It doesn't matter if you happen to be watching the very beginning of the movie before he's introduced, or if you're not watching the movie at all. The movie exists, and Morpheus is a part of it. He's not on every frame of the movie, of course -- but as long as the movie exists, he's there, doing exactly the same stuff, wearing the same glasses, giving the same speeches.



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Hi Metric,

Does the fact that there is seemingly a single arrow of time effect this covariant state that you are speaking of? In Slaughter House Five, Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time and pops back and forth from past to future to past again. The Aliens in this book view earthlings trouble with contemplating time as a color blindness problem ( they see past, present and future all at once and can focus their attention on a given moment when they wish, and see humans inability to do this as a disability). Billy Pilgrim’s ability to pop back and forth and further, to remember the future as well as the past, leads him to understand that we are in the type of covariant state that you describe.

However, in real life, this doesn’t happen, we can never remember the future. Time travels one way, period. So my question remains: how does the arrow of time effect the covariant state we are in?

[Metric]

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However, in real life, this doesn’t happen, we can never remember the future. Time travels one way, period. So my question remains: how does the arrow of time effect the covariant state we are in?

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This is a very good question -- it turns out that the quantum mechanical arrow of time is not a fundamental thing. There's really no fundamental reason that it has to point in the direction we perceive. In fact, one can construct examples where the quantum mechanical arrow of time reverses, and you "remember the future." However, these typically involve a small number of degrees of freedom (modeling the observer as a single particle, for simplicity) -- in practice, it would be monumentally difficult to actually do something like this, as the standard direction of the flow of time is subtly related to thermodynamics. The quantum mechanial future corresponds to the increasing von Neumann entropy of the observer. So the reason we experience a definite arrow of time can probably be ultimately tied to the extremely low-entropy state of the big bang.

BTW, some of this is extremely new stuff that hasn't even been published yet. In the standard formalism of projective collapse, the quantum future is pretty much just taken as a given. The definition of the future as the increasing von Neumann entropy of the observer is, to the best of my knowledge, brand spanking new.

[KipBond]

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There is no reason or evidence to believe in our existence before birth. ... I believe a rational soul will continue to exist after the material body is dead though.

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Irrational Belief anyone?

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FYP

[Kaj]

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There is no reason or evidence to believe in our existence before birth. ... I believe a rational soul will continue to exist after the material body is dead though.

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Double standard anyone?

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And where will your abstract ideas go, assuming you have any?

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I don't know. But I have no reason or evidence that they go anywhere. Isn't that the standard you used for life before birth? Why don't you use that same standard for life after death? You really couldn't have demonstrated your selective bias any more clearly.